The Asterisk Community

One of the compelling strengths of Asterisk is the
passionate community that developed and supports it. This community, led
by the fine folks at Digium, is keenly aware of the cultural significance
of Asterisk and has an optimistic view of the future.

One of the more powerful side effects of
the Asterisk community’s energy is the cooperation it has spawned among
telecommunications, networking, and information technology professionals
who share a love for this phenomenon. While these cadres have
traditionally been at odds with each other, in the Asterisk community they
delight in each others’ skills. The significance of this cooperation
cannot be underestimated.

If the dream of Asterisk is to be realized,
the community must continue to grow—yet one of the key challenges that the
community currently faces is a rapid influx of new users. The members of
the existing community, having birthed this thing called Asterisk, are generally welcoming of new
users, but they’ve grown impatient with being asked the kinds of questions
whose answers can often be obtained independently, if one is willing to
devote some time to research and experimentation.

Obviously, new users do not fit any
particular kind of mold. While some will happily spend hours experimenting
and reading various blogs describing the trials and tribulations of
others, many people who have become enthusiastic about this technology are
completely uninterested in such pursuits. They want a simple,
straightforward, step-by-step guide that’ll get them up and running,
followed by some sensible examples describing the best methods of
implementing common functionality (such as voicemail, auto attendants, and
the like).

To the members of the expert community, who
(correctly) perceive that Asterisk is like a web development language,
this approach doesn’t make any sense. To them, it’s clear that you have to
immerse yourself in Asterisk to appreciate its subtleties. Would one ask
for a step-by-step guide to programming and expect to learn from it all
that a language has to offer?

Clearly, there’s no one approach that’s
right for everyone. Asterisk is a different animal altogether, and it
requires a totally different mind-set. As you explore the community,
though, be aware that it includes people with many different skill sets
and attitudes. Some of these folks do not display much patience with new
users, but that’s often due to their passion for the subject, not because
they don’t welcome your participation.

The Asterisk Mailing Lists

As with any community, there are places where members of
the Asterisk community meet to discuss matters of mutual interest. Of
the mailing lists you will find at http://lists.digium.com, these three are currently the
most important:

Asterisk-Biz

Anything commercial with respect to Asterisk belongs
in this list. If you’re selling something Asterisk-related, sell
it here. If you want to buy an Asterisk service or product, post
here.

Asterisk-Dev

The Asterisk developers hang out here. The purpose
of this list is the discussion of the development of the software
that is Asterisk, and its participants vigorously defend that
purpose. Expect a lot of heat if you post anything to this list
not specifically relating to programming or development of the
Asterisk code base. General coding questions (such as queries on
interfacing with AGI or AMI) should be directed to the
Asterisk-Users list.

Warning

The Asterisk-Dev list is not
second-level support! If you scroll through the mailing list
archives, you’ll see this is a strict rule. The Asterisk-Dev
mailing list is about discussion of core Asterisk development,
and questions about interfacing your external programs via AGI
or AMI should be posted on the
Asterisk-Users list.

Asterisk-Users

This is where most Asterisk users hang out. This
list generates several hundred messages per day and has over ten
thousand subscribers. While you can go here for help, you are
expected to have done some reading on your own before you post a
query.

Asterisk Wiki Sites

The Asterisk Wiki (which exists in large part due to the
tireless efforts of James Thompson—thanks
James!) is a source of much enlightenment and confusion.
Another important resource is the community-maintained repository of
VoIP knowledge at http://www.voip-info.org, which
contains a truly inspiring cornucopia of fascinating, informative, and
frequently contradictory information about many subjects, just one of
which is Asterisk. Since Asterisk documentation forms by far the bulk of
the information on this website,[9] and it probably contains more Asterisk knowledge than all
other sources put together (with
the exception of the mailing list archives), it is a popular place to go
for Asterisk knowledge.

An important new wiki project is the
official Asterisk Wiki, found at http://wiki.asterisk.org. While not yet as full of
content as voip-info.org, this wiki will be
more formally supported and is therefore more likely to contain
information that is kept current and accurate.

The IRC Channels

The Asterisk community maintains Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
channels on irc.freenode.net. The two most active
channels are #asterisk and
#asterisk-dev.[10] To cut down on spam-bot intrusions, both of these channels
now require registration to join.[11]

Asterisk User Groups

Over the past decade, in many cites around the world,
lonely Asterisk users began to realize that there were other like-minded
people in their towns. Asterisk User Groups (AUGs) began to spring up
all over the place. While these groups don’t have any official
affiliation with each other, they generally link to one anothers’
websites and welcome members from anywhere. Type “Asterisk User Group”
into Google to track down one in your area.

The Asterisk Documentation Project

The Asterisk Documentation Project was started by Leif
Madsen and Jared Smith, but several people in the community have
contributed.

The goal of the documentation project is
to provide a structured repository of written work on Asterisk. In
contrast with the flexible and ad hoc nature of the Wiki, the Docs project is passionate about building
a more focused approach to various Asterisk-related subjects.

As part of the efforts of the Asterisk
Docs project to make documentation available online, this book is
available at the http://www.asteriskdocs.org
website, under a Creative Commons license.

[10] The #asterisk-dev channel is for the
discussion of changes to the underlying code base of Asterisk and is
also not second-tier support. Discussions related to programming
external applications that interface with Asterisk via AGI or AMI
are meant to be in #asterisk.

[11] To register, run /msg nickserv
help when you connect to the service via your favorite IRC
client.